


the threshold

by Anonymous



Series: a moment, prompted [2]
Category: Hollow Knight (Video Games)
Genre: (is that the correct tag?), Gen, Nonnies Made Me Do It, Violence, a little bit of canon-typical body horror, godhome ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-16
Updated: 2020-08-16
Packaged: 2021-03-05 20:33:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,071
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25901383
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: It emerges from the ruined temple, and the world splits: what could have been, what should have been, and what happens.
Relationships: The Hollow Knight | Pure Vessel & Hornet
Series: a moment, prompted [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2186166
Kudos: 24
Collections: Anonymous





	the threshold

**Author's Note:**

> For the prompt: 100 Words Of Should Have / Could Have / Actually

_It could have gone like this:_  
  
The Hollow Knight lurched forward, eyes empty of infection, but murky light undoubtedly pulsing in the gap of its absent heart. The Old Light's sickness may have dulled that ancient strength, but the rot and rust could not blunt their nail, just as Hornet's reflexes could snap her needle to her hand before she turned, yet were not enough to stop her from flinching at the sight of familiar, empty eyes.  
  
(The little ghost had made her soft, hadn't they? Hesitating, where she should have struck without mercy. Or was it the abyss they unlocked, the mounds of broken little faces staring up at her, that made her grip tremble, however slightly?  
  
Or... had it been something much older than that?)  
  
Whatever it was, she hesitated, and if there was one lesson Hallownest had taught her, it was that to hesitate was to die. That she only felt the cold metal through her thorax for a few bright, hellish seconds was a small mercy.  
  
  
  
_It should have gone like this:_  
  
The Hollow Knight lurched forward, and Hornet stared down the vessel's dark eyes for only a fraction of a second before instinct and training took over. The Hollow Knight's strength had been drained by disease, a body left to atrophy in chains, but under the stumbling Hornet could still recognize a warrior's stance and grip.  
  
The fight was barely such. She only had to strike where it was weak, lodging her needle into the crack in the Hollow Knight's mask and levering it side to side to force the crack to widen. The Hollow Knight thrashed beneath her, struggling to adapt to an unfamiliar form of attack, leaving Hornet wrapped around one horn, clinging to it as if riding an ill-tempered dirtcarver.  
  
Distantly, she wondered if the Hollow Knight could truly feel pain, like an ordinary bug. She had seen the small ones seem distressed by injuries, but assumed it merely a drive for self-preservation. They did not flinch in the heat of battle.  
  
(It did not matter. She was putting the wretched thing out of its misery. Nothing more.)  
  
In time, the Hollow Knight's fighting slowed. Hornet pushed with all the strength she had, bracing her back against a horn nearly as long as she was tall, and with a final visceral snap the shell gave way, the mask splitting in two and spilling inky shadow onto the temple's doorstep. One piece went skittering across the cobblestones to stop at the far end of the chamber. The other broke her fall with sharp, jagged edges as the Hollow Knight collapsed, headless.  
  
She did not have time to stand before it happened -- some spectral _thing_ erupted from the fallen body before her, bearing a shade of her cursed sibling's mask. The very crack she had broken open ran like a scar of light along its face, those narrow eyes bright as lanterns against the darkness of its form. She should have expected it. All the others, the small ones, had been the same.  
  
This creature did not know mercy. When she defeated it, it was with open wounds and no silk left to bind them, battered limbs that did not follow her commands. She could only curl up in the wreckage of her sibling's shell, cold and bleeding, and wait.  
  
  
  
_But instead, it went like this:_  
  
The Hollow Knight lurched forward, and staggered, half-tripping over a filthy, tattered cloak, forced too low to the ground by heavy horns and weak, unsteady legs. Hornet's needle already filled her grip, a comforting weight that had carried her through an era of hunt and peril.  
  
She held her stance for a long, uncertain moment, ready to defend, but when the Hollow Knight made no further move, she considered her options. She took one step closer, then another, until she could have reached out and taken the nail from the Hollow Knight's single hand (the other, she realized, was missing), and then waited another moment, still prepared to jump back or parry, too uneasy to drop her guard.  
  
The Old Light had not been a clever thing, even at its worst. To feign surrender so completely, unprompted, was unlike it.  
  
The vines and pustules that throbbed like beating hearts through the crossroads had withered away to a dry dead-grass brown. The husks outside had fallen quiet. To force such a retreat, with the vessel of the infection itself untouched... Hornet could not imagine what had caused it, but nor could she ignore the growing conviction that the little ghost must have had something to do with it.  
  
The Hollow Knight shifted ever so slightly, and she tensed again as she watched those familiar eyes lift, just enough meet her gaze. She stared, and the void stared back.  
  
With a silent breath so deep she could feel it, the Hollow Knight knelt before her. That gaze did not stray from her. Something dark as ink spattered on the tiles, and she could see the way the Hollow Knight's whole body shook with effort as it moved.  
  
"You're injured," she said, as if that wasn't the most obvious part of it all.  
  
The Hollow Knight's head bowed and raised again. Was that a nod? (It was impure, unhollow, of course it was, that was why the world itself had fallen apart around them all in the first place, and all the rest in the pit had been as well--)  
  
She called on her silk, weaving together a bandage, letting her hands move before her mind could tell her to stop. The Hollow Knight made no attempt to prevent her from peeling their cloak from their infection-coated carapace, teasing the grimy cloth away from where sacs of burning light must have burst and leaked, covering the concavities with hasty wrappings she would have to change out later to clean the wounds.  
  
Hornet didn't travel the crossroads often, but she had still traversed the length of it more times than she could ever hope to count. There was a spring deeper down, she knew, with clear enough water to wash with.  
  
"Lean on me," she instructed. The Hollow Knight obediently shifted their weight, spreading it between Hornet, their nail, and their own wobbly legs. "The spring is a few levels below. I'll aid you there, and address your injuries properly."  
  
She did not see it, but the shadows in the corners thanked her.


End file.
